Reticulated flatwoods salamander

The reticulated flatwoods salamander (Ambystoma bishopi) is a species of mole salamander that is native to a small portion of the southeastern coastal plain in the western panhandle of Florida and extreme southwestern Georgia. The species once occurred in portions of southern Alabama but is now considered extirpated there. Its ecology and life history are nearly identical to its sister species, the frosted flatwoods salamander (A. cingulatum). It inhabits seasonally wet pine flatwoods and pine savannas west of the Apalachicola River-Flint River system. The fire ecology of longleaf pine savannas is well-known, but there is less information on natural fire frequencies of wetland habitats in this region. Like the Frosted Flatwoods Salamander, this salamander breeds in ephemeral wetlands with extensive emergent vegetation, probably maintained by summer fires. Wetlands overgrown with woody shrubs are less likely to support breeding populations.

Description

Ambystoma bishopi is a medium-sized species with a snout to vent length of 40 to 50 millimetres (1.6 to 2.0 in) and 14 to 16 costal grooves. The head is long with a tapered snout and there are vomerine teeth in the roof of the mouth. The forelimbs are stout and the tail is flattened towards the tip, being shorter than the head and body length combined. The skin is smooth and the dorsal surface is reticulated, with thin grey lines forming a net-like pattern on a brownish-black background. The ventral surface is dark with sparse white speckles. This salamander is similar in appearance to Ambystoma cingulatum but the latter has a more frosted dorsal pattern and larger white spots on the ventral surface.

Flatwoods salamander

Flatwoods salamanders are mole salamanders of Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina:

Frosted flatwoods salamander

The frosted flatwoods salamander (Ambystoma cingulatum) is a small (9-13.5 cm total length), elongated species of mole salamander. It has a small, indistinct head, short legs, and a long, rounded tail. Typical coloration consists of a background of brownish- to purplish-black overlaid with narrow gray or silvery-white reticulations (net-like markings), bands, or diffuse spotting. The gilled aquatic larvae are distinctly colored, having a series of bold brown and yellow longitudinal stripes.

The frosted flatwoods salamander has a very narrow geographic distribution, occurring only in the southeastern coastal plain of the United States. It inhabits seasonally wet pine flatwoods and pine savannas east of the Apalachicola River in northern Florida, southern South Carolina, and southern Georgia. Prior to European settlement, it was most likely a common member of the fire-maintained longleaf pine (Pinus palustris)-wiregrass (Aristida spp.) community, which has since largely been replaced by urban development, agriculture, and pine silviculture. A recently published study documents the extirpation of a sizable breeding population as a result of a common silvicultural practice of converting natural pine forest to ditched and bedded slash pine plantation. Further degradation of remaining frosted flatwoods salamander habitat has occurred as a result of the suppression of natural summer wildfires, allowing native ephemeral wetland communities to succeed to dense tangles of hardwood shrubs. As a result of these ongoing land use activities, populations are now extremely discontinuous and widely fragmented throughout the range as longleaf pine habitat is destroyed and degraded. It is currently restricted to a handful of remaining sites in Florida and Georgia, and has an especially tenuous presence in South Carolina.